Demand for concealed firearm licenses strong in Georgia

BRUNSWICK | After President Barack Obama won re-election, there was a big jump in Georgians securing licenses to carry concealed firearms.

After the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 first-graders and six adults in Newtown, Conn., there was another surge for the permits as residents foresaw calls for gun control.

The probate judges who issue the licenses in Southeast Georgia said it still hasn’t let up.

“Normally, we would have 150 in three months,’’ Glynn County Probate Judge Debra Howes said. “We now have 200 to 250 in a month.”

In spite of an increase of about $5 in the fee, to $79.25-$82 depending on the county, people are still coming, Howes said.

In Camden County, Judge Martin Gillette said his office issued 841 in all of 2012.

“Since Jan. 1, I’ve issued almost 500 of them,’’ he said.

So many people were lined up that Howes has stopped taking applications at 4 p.m. so that her two issuing clerks can close at 5.

In Ware County, the Probate Court issued only 17 in November. That rose to 75 in December, 107 in January and 81 in February.

Most people say what Mike Wiggins said Thursday as he came to apply, that they’d been meaning to get a permit for a long time.

“I just hadn’t gotten around to doing it,’’ said Wiggins, a retired civilian worker with the Army Corps of Engineers. “It’s for protection.

“I got my first shotgun when I was 10. I raised my kids and grandkids with guns,’’ he said.

His 8-year-old grandson can shoot pecans out of a tree with a pellet rife, Wiggins said.

MORE ‘AWARENESS’

Behind the friendly Wiggins was the equally friendly Marcus and Mandy Corbitt, who both said the “heightened awareness,’’ prompted them to get permits while they still can.

Both said they had always been around guns, but Mandy Corbitt said she wanted to carry her own.

“He’s not always around,’’ she said of her husband.

Clerk Tonya Carter said people don’t have a full understanding of the law, that it’s not a firearms registration requirement.

“We had a lady come in, throw [a pistol] on the counter and say, ‘I need to register this,’ ” Carter said. “We said, ‘No. you need to take that thing back to the car.’ ’’

Firearms are forbidden in the Ware County courthouse where the Probate Court is located.

The woman got her permit unarmed, Carter said.

Some law enforcement say that having a gun can make things worse, but for every story of a street shooting in Chicago there are anecdotes of old women chasing off burglars with their gun or armed people thwarting convenience store robberies.

There was also the tragic story of the Atlanta woman who shot at intruders only to be killed. The men breaking in were Atlanta police officers at the wrong house, some of whom later lied to cover up their slaying of the woman.

But that’s the big city. People want gun licenses even in low-crime rural areas such as Brantley County.

“In November, we sold 11. That’s about normal,’’ Brantley County Probate Judge Johnnie Crews said. “In December, we sold 22, 66 in January and 70 in February.’’

Crews said he has no idea what’s driving it in a county with few violent crimes.

“There are people getting them who never applied for one,’’ said Crews, who knows many of the applicants.

‘CLEAN AS A WHISTLE’

Crews and the other judges all see the same thing about those getting carry licenses — that most are solid, law-abiding citizens with clean records.

“I’d say nine out of 10 applications are clean as a whistle,’’ Gillette said.

Any disqualifying crimes typically go back to applicants’ youth, and in many cases the original crime was reduced to a misdemeanor, but court officials hadn’t forwarded the paperwork, a problem easily corrected, Gillette said.

“If you’ve got a felony on your record, you’re not going to get one,’’ he said.

Howes warns that the process is not simple, that it’s time-consuming with fingerprinting, background checks and photos.

“There are three sets of forms we have to enter into the computer. People think they can come up here on their lunch and get it done,’’ she said.